NHS reforms 'Cameron's poll tax'

David Cameron has lost the confidence of NHS staff and the controversial health reforms will be "his poll tax", Ed Miliband has claimed.

Published 22nd February 2012

Labour Party leader Ed Miliband said the NHS reforms will be David Cameron's 'poll tax'

The Labour leader urged the Prime Minister to drop the Health and Social Care Bill following a summit at Downing Street which excluded groups representing the "vast majority" of medics.

But the Prime Minister insisted the reforms would "save the NHS" and accused the Opposition leader of "opportunism".

Labour will step up pressure over the troubled shake-up by forcing a Commons vote on whether an internal assessment of the risks posed by the reforms should be published. But Mr Cameron said former Labour health secretary Andy Burnham had blocked the publication of a similar document when he was in office in 2009.

During raucous Prime Minister's Question Time exchanges, Mr Miliband said Mr Cameron's "ridiculous" summit excluded the main organisations representing "the GPs, the nurses, the midwives, the pathologists, the psychiatrists, the physiotherapists and, just for good measure, the radiologists".

He asked: "How can you possibly think it's a good idea to hold a health summit which excludes the vast majority of people who work in the NHS?"

Mr Cameron said: "What I want to do is safeguard our NHS. We ... are putting more money into the NHS, money that they (Labour) are specifically committed to taking out. But let's be frank: money alone is not going to be enough. We have got to meet the challenge of an ageing population, more expensive treatments, more people on long-term conditions and that is why we have got to reform the NHS.

"My summit was about those organisations, including clinical commissioning groups up and down the country - 8,200 GP practices - that want to put these reforms in place."

But Mr Miliband said the Prime Minister had previously insisted that "we have to take our nurses and doctors with us" in implementing reforms but "now he can't even be in the same room as the doctors and nurses". He asked Mr Cameron: "Doesn't that tell you that you've lost the confidence of those who work in our National Health Service?"

The Prime Minister said Labour used to support reform of the NHS, including competition and GPs being put in charge of budgets.